The committee was formed in 1899 in response to the outbreak of the war, for the "dissemination of accurate information", and to seek an early "peaceable settlement between this country and the Boer Republics".
[4][5] Other prominent members included John Clifford, president of the Stop the War Committee,[6] Allan Heywood Bright MP,[1] Sir Wilfrid Lawson MP, publisher Thomas Fisher Unwin, left-wing journalist Henry Brailsford, and Robert Spence Watson, author of The History of English Rule and Policy in South Africa.
[8] Against this background the Committee drew considerable public opposition to its campaigning, particularly when it organised a women's demonstration against the war in the same year.
[10] Emily Hobhouse visited South Africa in 1900–1; her 1901 report on the concentration camps led to the Fawcett Commission, which formally confirmed her findings.
[2] The South African branch of the Conciliation Committee was founded in Cape Town in early 1900, under the chairmanship of prominent parliamentarian John Molteno.